Anyone into retro PC building?

general
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I am curious. I have recently started watching a few different YouTubers who dabble with this and I love learning about older systems. I am considering setting up an older system from parts I find around at garage sales and local goodwill spots (or thrift stores). LGR is probably my favorite YouTuber for this.

Does anyone here mess around with retro PC builds?

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I’m not a fan. Seeing the retro ‘hardware’ causes flashbacks, which causes anxiety from the old days of crashes and reboots :sweat_smile:

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I still have a very old laptop. It was my first one. It no longer boots but I am looking into options to “restore” it. Not to do, just to have and look back on. I watch LGR as well!

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I like seeing what can be built with retro setups, that is for sure. I wouldn’t do it myself. I have too much fun messing with current tech. I understand why people do this though. I have seen some pretty cool custom builds made from computers from the '90s.

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Ah so you want it to function in an old state to just have. I think in most cases, this is possible to do cheap or even in some cases free if you can find old laptops that are being scrapped for parts!

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Yeah, pretty much. A friend of mine suggested grinding older latops at garage sales, thrift stores, and I guess they sometimes pop up at goodwill spots too. I am going to check ebay and craigslist for the heck of it.

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Haven’t used it because my wife doesn’t like it but I still have my 80486 and 80686. I want to pull them out and see if I can get Linux to work on them. Any ideas would be great. Though the computers still work, do not have any VGA graphic cards and my EVGA monitors do not work.

Once I can get a graphics card and a supported monitor then I can pull up all the specs but believe they have 4 megs of RAM and a 30M hard drive. I know the 686 has Dr Dos 6.0 on it. I think the 486 has IBM DOS 3.0. Never really liked Windows but my wife only wants Windows even though she complains about it being slow (especially with the auto updates).

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My wife won’t allow me to keep much stuff. I think the oldest thing I have sitting down is an old Thinkpad T40 or T60. lol Do let use know how it goes. :pushpin: